Attorney is retained by plaintiff to prepare a commercial and corporate agreement between plaintiff and a commercial suitor.  In the end, plaintiff claims, attorney took a look at plaintiff’s niche business, then formed its own spin-off company to compete.  Competition rose to the $ 2.5 billion level.  Justice Feinman rendered a decision in Sharbat v …

Purchasers of real property should have bullet-proof protection on title and the conditions of sale.  There are any number of good, competent attorneys who are ready to handle a real estate buy-sell and to get the appropriate title search, survey and whatever else is necessary to ensure that the buyer gets what the bargain requires. …

Attorney fees are an endless source of conflict.  They have always been an endless source of conflict.  We faintly remember from high school that Abraham Lincoln was involved in attorney fee litigation.  Today is no exception.  inLanda v Blocker ;2011 NY Slip Op 00191 ;Decided on January 11, 2011 ;Appellate Division, Second Department …

Client suffers injury, client suffers (same or different) financial stresses and filed a petition in bankruptcy.  Effect is that client loses claim of injury to the bankruptcy estate, and may no longer bring the action.  Eventually, client is discharged in bankruptcy and sues the professional.  The case will be dismissed, for lack of standing.  So…

Typically a claim of breach of fiduciary duty involving an attorney will be an afterthought, or an alternative pleading, sometimes a duplicitive one, sometimes an independent cause of action.  Rarely does it stand alone.  Here, an attorney is accused of aiding a ponzi scheme, and really big numbers are involved.  As Nolene Walder of the…

Ripeness in legal terms means that a dispute is so fully developed that a court might determine the rights and liabilities of the parties.  This issue arises in legal malpractice settings because the underlying case (the case within a case) is not always finished or fully litigated.  When the underlying case is not yet fully…

Partnerships and LLCs, real estate and plans to make a lot of money often unravel, and do so in messy ways.  Here, in Shapsis v Kogan ; 2011 NY Slip Op 50014(U) ; Decided on January 7, 2011 Supreme Court, Kings County ; Demarest, J.  we see the tail end of the proceedings, after a…

We write that legal malpractice issues are everywhere, and might surface in any setting.  Here is a story from the National Law Journal about a 35 year old missing will of Mama Cass, and whether the attorneys who had it in their files were negligent in not producing it back when it counted.

Leigh Jones…